Tag: Matthew 24:36

Olivet Discourse Matthew 24:36

Should you make a prediction? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have a contention that the Olivet Discourse has switched from a this to a that. I think it’s likely Jesus is talking about a return someday. At this verse, verse 36, I want mainly to put a call out to those who disagree with me. Let’s look at the verse.

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”

A lot of you will remain futurists and/or dispensationalists. That’s fine. I can’t convince everyone and there are good Christians on all sides. However, I beg you that if you want to remain in that camp, please do not be one of the people that either sets up a prediction on when Jesus is going to come or supports those who do. The moment you hear someone tell you when Jesus will return, disavow them immediately.

We have too many people that are waking up everyday and trying to interpret the Bible with the help of a newspaper. Please don’t do this. Every time someone has made a prediction so far, it has been wrong and it has just given more fodder to skeptics of Christianity. Jesus said no one would know and that should rule out any attempt to guess.

I have seen some people say “Well, we can’t know the day, but maybe we can know the year.” This is just being ridiculous frankly. The main thing Jesus tells us throughout this is to be prepared. Time spent trying to guess the date could better be spent in preparation.

It’s also pretty arrogant of you to think that everyone else in history who has done this has got it wrong, but you are the one who will get it right. Please do not try. If anything, I think many dispensationalists should be concerned about how past events were read as modern fulfillment only to be shown to be false later on. How many people have said XYZ was the antichrist only to have that person die?

And yes, this includes national figures. Personally, until we get some sort of public apology from John Hagee on his idea of the four blood moons, then we should not listen to him whatsoever. (Actually, that would be good practice in general) It would be interesting to take note in a Christian bookstore of all the books on prophecy and see how many of them are irrelevant just ten years later.

So yeah, no one knows. Please don’t even try. Be a dispensationalist or a futurist if you wish, but please do not go this route.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Answering Vox Day On The Trinity

Does Matthew 24:36 refute the Trinity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A reader sent me this piece from Vox Day wanting to get my input on it. Vox is a smart guy and has written going after the new atheists, though it was a book I never got around to reading. Yet here, the argument really isn’t the best. It’s one of the common arguments used against the Trinity.

Go to Matthew 24:36 and Jesus doesn’t know the day or the hour of His second coming. (My Preterist self wants to be clear it’s not about His return. That’s something else.) Not only do we have to explain the Son, but what about the Holy Spirit. Why isn’t He listed?

There are two options here. The Son is a simple case I think. The Son took on a sort of kenotic emptying as in Philippians 2. This was not an emptying of His deity. It was an emptying I think of the prerogative to use His divine attributes apart from His mission. It wasn’t necessary that the Son know the time of the events. All He had to say was it would be within this generation.

This has been the traditional understanding for quite some time and let me state that to argue against the Trinity is to argue against the wisdom of the major traditions of Christianity for thousands of years. Of course, there are some passages that are hard to understand, but there are far far more that are harder to understand otherwise. I don’t expect Vox to go and do a full look at every passage. It’s appropriate to bring up one concern at times.

Yet this doesn’t answer about the Holy Spirit. Shouldn’t the Holy Spirit know the date of the second coming? For this, there are two answers.

The first is that the Spirit submits to the Father and to the Son so there could be some limitations that the Spirit takes on as well when the Son goes on His mission. This isn’t because of the Spirit taking on humanity, but the Spirit working in tandem with the Son in the same kind of way. The Spirit would not be revealed this.

Another is to look at a passage like 1 Cor. 2:11. No one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. This would mean that the Holy Spirit would be included in the identity of the Father. We could also ask if God the Father would be ignorant of something since in Rev. 19 the Son of Man comes riding a white horse with a name no one knows save Jesus Himself.

Vox would not likely have a problem with this since he does not accept divine omniscience. I do. Still, while it might not be that either of my interpretations can be proven to be the right one, they are both I think viable interpretations of the text and better in line with what has been taught throughout the church. If someone wants to go against a doctrine all three branches of Christianity agree on, I think the burden is highly on them.

In Christ,
Nick Peters